Halil Altindere: Homeland (2016)Video at KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces

On a beach, a group of female tourists do yoga on a bathing jetty with a view of the azure Aegean Sea. But the tranquillity of the situation is suddenly disturbed when a group of refugees rush towards the jetty, pull themselves on board an inflatable, orange lifeboat, and head for the open sea. At first glance it seems surreal. But this is a portrayal of a real-life situation, which – especially in the summer of 2015 – took place at various points along the coast of Turkey, where thousands of refugees attempted to cross the ocean from the very same beaches where millions of tourists were on holiday.The first scene of Halil Altindere’s Homeland zooms in on the intersecting, yet radically disparate journeys of tourists and refugees. The video then follows the perilous journey of a group of refugees to Germany. En route, they pass a range of transit sites, checkpoints and border crossings under drone surveillance. In the final scene they end up in Berlin’s old Tempelhof Airport, which has served as a makeshift refugee camp since 2015.

Homeland blends fact with fiction, cutting between documentary footage and staged scenes. The collaboration with the Syrian activist and rapper Mohammed Abu Hajar is characteristic of Halil Altindere’s collective and collaborative art projects addressing contemporary political issues. On the soundtrack Mohammed Abu Hajar raps about life as a refugee: being stranded in transit and feeling alien, vulnerable and frequently misunderstood in a new country. As a refugee himself, he has taken the route shown in the video as part of his escape from Syria to Germany, where he lives today. Halil Altindere was born in 1971 in Mardin. He lives and works in Istanbul.

Halil Altindere: Homeland (2016)Video at KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces

On a beach, a group of female tourists do yoga on a bathing jetty with a view of the azure Aegean Sea. But the tranquillity of the situation is suddenly disturbed when a group of refugees rush towards the jetty, pull themselves on board an inflatable, orange lifeboat, and head for the open sea. At first glance it seems surreal. But this is a portrayal of a real-life situation, which – especially in the summer of 2015 – took place at various points along the coast of Turkey, where thousands of refugees attempted to cross the ocean from the very same beaches where millions of tourists were on holiday.The first scene of Halil Altindere’s Homeland zooms in on the intersecting, yet radically disparate journeys of tourists and refugees. The video then follows the perilous journey of a group of refugees to Germany. En route, they pass a range of transit sites, checkpoints and border crossings under drone surveillance. In the final scene they end up in Berlin’s old Tempelhof Airport, which has served as a makeshift refugee camp since 2015.

Homeland blends fact with fiction, cutting between documentary footage and staged scenes. The collaboration with the Syrian activist and rapper Mohammed Abu Hajar is characteristic of Halil Altindere’s collective and collaborative art projects addressing contemporary political issues. On the soundtrack Mohammed Abu Hajar raps about life as a refugee: being stranded in transit and feeling alien, vulnerable and frequently misunderstood in a new country. As a refugee himself, he has taken the route shown in the video as part of his escape from Syria to Germany, where he lives today. Halil Altindere was born in 1971 in Mardin. He lives and works in Istanbul.